In about two months, Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon will introduce a bill in the Knesset imposing a tax on owners of three or more homes, and landlords are already threatening to raise rents.
However, there are people working even now to prevent rent hikes from being realized. Tenants are tired of landlords' threats, and they threaten to take measures of their own to prevent rents from rising.
Channel 2 News reports that the Tenants' Union, which represents tens of thousands of tenants, has recently sent a letter to Kahlon, in which it threatens to take action against landlords: "In the next few days, we will call on all tenants, whose landlords threaten to harm them following this new tax, to immediately report this to the Tax Authority."
In other words, tenants are telling the landlords: "If you raise our rent, we will squeal to the Tax Authority" - since most landlords do not pay taxes on rent as required by law. Now all we have to do is wait and see whether this step will prevent landlords from realizing their threats and raising rents.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 30, 2016
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